


What Your Soul Said to Me

by jcrowquill



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cass in love, Castiel's True Form, Dean in semi-denial, M/M, Mr. Manly won't say it in English, stupidly romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 13:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jcrowquill/pseuds/jcrowquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel teaches Dean a few key words in Enochian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Your Soul Said to Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wraithnoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithnoir/gifts).



> I just have a lot of feelings about Cass in his true form and the whole angel-on-soul contact. ._. 
> 
> In my headcanon, Cass is actually pretty funny in Enochian. ;) English just doesn't translate well for him.

Even as he speaks aloud in English, Castiel thinks in Enochian.  

Castiel feels that its creation is one of God's perfect works.  Crafted concurrently with the angels themselves, the words and the creatures are woven together seamlessly in equal parts.  Every word has exactly one meaning and there is a word for every concept.  The result is a language that is powerful and expressive, suitable for discourse or wordplay, but impossible to misunderstand. A language for beings of pure thought to share themselves.

If humans could comprehend the meaning in each syllable, they would realize that it is like speaking in sentences made of novels.  All human knowledge of Enochian is paraphrased.  Even casual profanity is poetic and steeped in specific meaning, where an off-the-cuff jibe might be translated into a human language as a work of the length and complexity of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

His hunter does not  - could not ever - speak Enochian.

The angel has taught him phrases that can protect him, and Dean recites them tonelessly or with strange inflections that sound to him the way his own characteristic monotone must sound to Dean.  His sigils are clumsy like marks made by a child who doesn’t yet understand that he is writing words rather than drawing pictures.  Yet Castiel is fascinated and affectionate, committing each attempt to his immortal memory; millions of years after man has ceased to exist beyond the soft glow of souls in a billion repetitive heavens, the angel will remember with perfect clarity the time that Dean was trying to draw a protective ward and instead wrote the words “clandestine salt fire.” It was an honest mistake and the result was strangely evocative.

Sometimes Castiel feels limited by human language, which often ascribes many meanings to the same word.  He often misunderstands English or chooses the wrong word.  Things sometimes come out exactly wrong because of connotations that he simply doesn't know.

One night he tells Dean that he loves him in Enochian.  He doesn’t think that the hunter is even listening, but the man is used to catching scraps of information in noisy bars and hears enough to repeat it back to him and ask him what it means.

Surprised, Castiel replies, “It translates very roughly to ‘I love you.’”

Dean reddens visibly, having half-thought he was going to finally learn some angelic profanity.  He glances around the empty hotel room as though he expects Sam or the spectre of his father to materialize at any moment, then says gruffly, casually.

“Say it again.”

In English it would have been too much, but he wants to hear it again in the angel’s native tongue now that he has the meaning in mind.  Castiel understands this, despite that he has yet to learn to anticipate Dean’s reactions to most things related to the two of them, particularly in the surreptitious seconds, minutes, and hours that they spend without the younger Winchester.

He repeats himself, slightly quieter, and is surprised when Dean repeats him, obviously trying to mimic his intonation.  The angel smiles within his vessel and the vessel almost glows as it translates the emotion into a human expression.  He says it again, then nods appreciatively when Dean repeats it again with slightly clearer accuracy.

“Though that isn’t something you can say.”

The hunter wrinkles his nose at him, masking his offense with confusion.

“What do you mean?  I just did.”

There was a forceful but unspoken _And I fucking meant it, you asshole_  in his expression.

“No, the words are wrong,” Castiel explains, “You can only love on one plane and, at this point anyway, only with a finite mind for a finite time.”

Dean blinks slowly several times, catching the implication that Castiel’s love is the opposite of those things.  The enormity of it reminds him again, for easily the thousandth time that week, that the face that he is looking at is only a facade for an ageless, intellectually infinite creature.  He can’t conceptualize that idea for more than a millisecond at a time, but in that instant he can almost see the brilliant flash of the angel within the soft-mouthed thirty-something year old body before him.  Then the comprehension passes again and he’s just Cass, the human who’s actually an angel who is more like a human who just doesn’t get jokes and occasionally smites things with heavenly fire.  The man who for the sake of argument is not really a man at all if it means that they can touch each other below the waist.

“So what _can_  I say?”

Castiel is again surprised.

“Enochian is very specific… I don’t think that I could tell you a perfect translation without knowing your exact emotions.  I’ve only known the literal content of your heart once.”

Dean knows without asking that it was the period of time that he still can’t remember, the moment when Castiel, as he had once put it, gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.  

One night he’d had a few beers and asked the angel what it had been like.  The angel had replied that it was impossible to describe because his mortal mind could not comprehend the soul laid bare, just as Hell itself was impossible to describe and his own recollections were only crafted later by his human mind as translations to what he could conceive having happened to a human body. But he'd gone on to describe it anyway.

From what Dean had been able to piece together from his clumsy human words, his soul had been cradled within the grasp of the angel’s true form.  Through that touch and in that moment, they had known and understood each other completely.   Dean had forgotten it upon his return to his body, and he feels strange sometimes that Castiel still remembers.

He can’t remember that Castiel said those same words to him in Enochian then, already knowing and wanting the whole of him, including the parts he didn't want himself.

“Just give me **_something_**  then.  Something general.”

Castiel wants to tell him that there is nothing general in Enochian - there were several million words for 'dog' specific to breed, color, and temperament, after all -  but he remembers again the response to his original declaration.  Dean’s soul had spoken to him in a lesser voice, less brilliant and resounding than his own, immortal but singular rather than the thousands of voices that made up the angel’s tender almost-roar.

He thinks of simple words that can translate that murmur of his naked soul before they parted.

He says the words aloud and Dean trustingly repeats them.  They trade the phrase, which is thankfully short, back and forth until the pronunciation is passable and the words have been committed to the hunter’s memory.  He will write them down phonetically later on a sheet of paper that he'll tuck into his wallet rather than his father's journal.

“Now that I’ve practically worn it out, what does it mean?”

Castiel would have to write the translation into a poem thousands of pages long to explain its exact meaning.   _I called to the void and you came, without knowing you I have cried to you and prayed to you since before my soul knew words and the call was nothing more than a feeling of naked wanting, I would part from you a thousand times only to find you again, please hold my soul within yours, let me hold your heart within mine, the wicks of our souls draw from the same source and they will be extinguished in the same breath.  _

But longer, deeper, more florid, and more lyrical despite being only six syllables.

“It’s a call and answer, a match to what I said to you.  It’s easier if you just think of it like ‘I love you too.’”

Dean nods, trying to be casual.   _He_  didn’t say he loved him, not exactly; he said something in Enochian that may have just meant something like that.  That was fine, that was safe, and there was nothing there that undermined his sexuality or his personal identity.

Cass tells him that he loves him again, though the words are steeped in meaning that exceeds any human comprehension.

Dean replies that he loves him too, though in his soul’s words rather than those of  his contradictory mortal heart.

Satisfied, Dean orders a pizza and resolves aloud to say it to Cass in front of Sam and play it off as some in-joke in Enochian.  Cass knows he’s asking his permission and he casts his eyes skyward for a moment before repeating stoically that he loves him.

 


End file.
